


20/20

by TheAmethystRiddle



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 11:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12958584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAmethystRiddle/pseuds/TheAmethystRiddle
Summary: Osiris was a new man; his time in the Infinite Forest had given him much perspective on who he was and who he ought to be. But for all the things that did change, it was the things he could not change that haunted him.





	20/20

**Author's Note:**

> me, banging on bungie's door: where! is! my! andal! content! [more planned but not guaranteed]

He spent countless years in the Forest, chasing his tail, chasing his reflections' tails. Puzzle after puzzle, doorway after doorway. Each time he came up against a wall, he found he wandered down the same corridors. Not even for answers; just on some human compulsion he could not explain. 

The gates seemed to pop up in front of him without even needing to look for them. Perhaps it was this inkling of fate that always made him pull out his key and flip the cubes into alignment. The portal loomed above him into infinity, stretched in front of him into infinity. He stepped in, and the thousands of times he had been here twisted into branches in the simulation. 

He would step out, into the dim light of the lunar cave. He would look around at the frozen Fallen, the arc blasts hanging in midair. 

Sometimes he would point a gun at each Fallen in the room in turn, putting silent bullets through each of their heads. The bodies would twitch as death took them infinitely more quickly than they could ever have comprehended. Sometimes he would feel guilty when he caught the glassy gaze of an enemy who could never understand what had happened to him. 

Sometimes he would walk past them, weaving through the crossfire toward the corner of the room, ignoring Sagira as she would bump a rifle here and a pistol there for her own amusement. He would stop by the man crouched alone under Taniks's shadow and look around with dark eyes. 

Sometimes he would simply pick up the Ghost and the pistol and press them into Andal's hands, wrapping the man's fingers around the stock in a strange moment of tenderness. It was more than they had ever touched in life, closer than either of their animosity would have let them be. Then he would step away and not look back. 

He wasn't even sure why he did it, why he went to such lengths over and over. He felt a strange guilt, though Andal's death had come years after he had gone. And even more so, when he had been there, he would have felt no sorrow to learn of it. 

Sometimes he would knock the pistol closer, and Sagira would nudge the scorch cannon away. He would trust the rest to Andal's wits and abilities. The man had both in spades, though Osiris would not have admitted it when they had known each other. Nor would he have granted Andal any measure of trust, but now he saw the error there. 

Perhaps he just wanted Andal to see. He wished for some possibility that Andal might live to see his redemption, might live even to forgive him. They had been unspeakably nasty to each other in their time, cold at best and livid at worst. He'd had many years to regret those things. Perhaps he just wished that Andal could regret them too. 

Sometimes he would kick the cannon out of Taniks's hand in a fit of rage, a rare slip back into his old habits. Sagira would nudge Andal's Ghost out from under Taniks's raised foot and he would recall with a pang of remorse that in all these thousands of years he had forgotten the Ghost's name. 

Sometimes he would pat Andal on the shoulder before he left. Sometimes he would curse the man's idiocy to his face. Sometimes he would wish him a murmured good luck. 

It meant nothing. It did nothing. Either he was looping through simulation after simulation, affecting only the machinations of the great Engine, or he had touched only a fraction of the realities in which Andal would die. Not his own; never his own. Andal Brask would be dead no matter how many times Osiris saved his life. 

But it meant something to him to think that somewhere, in some universe, some far-flung version of himself stepped out of the Forest to see Andal standing there, leaning on his rifle as he always did, with a laugh in his eyes. _So maybe you're not so terrible after all,_ he'd say, leveling a cheerful finger at that Osiris's face. _Now if you did your laundry more than once a century we could actually get along._ It was enough, sometimes, to imagine that. 

Sometimes he would stand frozen in place in the middle of the tableau until Sagira would bump against his shoulder to stir him. He would turn with a shake of his head and pull the scorch cannon away. Sagira would nudge the pistol closer. Osiris would kneel and cradle Andal's Ghost in his hands, and he'd wish he could remember. Septimus. Lucky Sevens. Something with the number seven. Andal's superstitions had always been strange. 

Then he would pull out his key and step toward the portal without looking back. He would never look back, never watch it play out, never check the outcome. The question was always preferable to the answer. He would stare into the gate as it reached above and in front of him into infinity and he would hope that it meant something. That it did something. Then he would step in. 

He stepped out.


End file.
